


Playing House

by lilsmartass



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Introspection, marauder era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Written for my Isolation square of Dark Bingo. It’s almost harder that they can’t be found than it was when they were being hunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing House

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG
> 
> Disclaimer: To my continuing disappointment, I don’t own the Harry Potter characters. I do have a really nice set of the books though; do you think JK will swap with me?
> 
> Warning/Spoilers: Assumed knowledge of James and Lily’s past.
> 
> Genre: Introspection, Lily POV

** Playing House **

 

 

There had been a girl in their year, Miranda Hopworth. She had been a Hufflepuff, a nice enough girl, but one without friends; which was not to say she was picked on, simply that she was ignored, invisible even to the Slytherins. Lily remembered swapping a few cruel remarks with Alice and Marlene herself when something big enough that even Miranda had been invited had been happening, and how she had all but skipped with the childish glee of being included. _Pathetic_ , they had called it then. Now Lily thought she might truly understand and she felt guilty for every unkind word she had ever said about Miranda.

She and James had been in hiding for only a few weeks, and already the isolation was beginning to tell on them. She loved him desperately, and he her, and at first the secluded cottage in Godric’s Hollow had been a paradise, a second honeymoon, albeit one where Harry woke them up several times a night. It had been the fantasy of a little girl playing house: the beautiful country cottage, the adoring, handsome husband, the delightful cooing baby in the crib. But as the weeks had drawn on, loneliness had begun to tell on them. The missed their friends, and though neither of them had ever exactly been socialites, they missed the occasional hustle and bustle and contact of other people in the simple acts of going shopping, or stopping for lunch at the Hogshead.

And all this served only to remind Lily that she herself was doing a passable impersonation of Miranda Hopworth’s glee because tonight Sirius was coming to dinner. It was almost laughable how excited she was because they had only been in this lonely little house for a few weeks and prior to that she’d seen Sirius most days. The knowledge did little to dislodge the bright smile from her face as she pulled down a saucepan and began to cook. Lily knew hundreds of cooking spells, and had had little to do over their incarceration here but practice them and then guilt James into eating the results while he pointed out, less than tactfully, that he’d rather have the soggy mash Harry was eating. Today however, was special, so she was cooking the muggle way as a way of channelling her excitement into something useful. Besides, she wanted to keep out of James’ way because if she was excited, it was nothing to the incandescent glee lighting up his face. He had spent the past hour whirling Harry above his head and making, what he assured her were, dragon noises, and she wanted to be nowhere where she could be called on when their son was, inevitably, sick.

It was the most life she had seen out of him in ages. James knew why they had to be here, and he’d no sooner leave Lily and Harry alone in Godric’s Hollow than he would leave behind his own lungs, but the knowledge that his friends were out there, fighting and suffering and dying, whilst he hid here in the eggshell white house had made him tense and edgy, guilty and ashamed. He hadn’t started fighting with Lily so much as he had taken to ignoring her, twirling his wand anxiously between his fingers and fretting endlessly about the fates of the others. The comfort he sought in her arms had spoken more of their mutual frustration and desperation to have another’s touch than it did of the feelings the foundation of their marriage had been based on. This honest joy in playing with his son while his wife cooked and his best friend made his way over was as happy as she had seen him in weeks, and even if Lily hadn’t long ago laid to rest the problems she had with Sirius, she would have been grateful to him for putting the smile she loved back on James’ face.

She hummed a few notes as she began slicing an onion. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful for this house, she understood why they had to be here, but it didn’t make the separation any easier to bear. Her bright humming petered out, the joy falling from her face in a way the knowledge of her own ridiculousness had not been able to cause as she thought about how much she and James were looking forward to company tonight, and how much quieter and emptier the little house would seem when Sirius left again.


End file.
